2021 Is Launched!
(Better late than never!)
As we shared in our last post, Thrive Haus Consulting has re-oriented a bit to focus solely on mentoring, advising, and investing.
On the investing front, we are pleased to be involved with Tastry, Relentless, and WizeFi. All interesting companies based here in SLO.
Surprisingly, we have somehow managed to get even more involved with a SoCal based company – Sarcix (DBA mapEDU). Not only are we investors, but I somehow ended up as the CEO – and Kat is the Digital Brand Manager.
The mapEDU story is an interesting one…..
Founded as Sarcix by two biologists that had worked together in the pharmaceutical industry, the original vision was to develop a new Alzheimer’s drug. When funding failed to materialize, they joined with two former colleagues from the USC School of Pharmacy to create a curriculum mapping tool for medical, osteopathy, and pharmacy schools.
As you can imagine, these types of schools have extensive learning outcomes they are required to cover – and as part of a very rigorous accreditation process – prove they are actually teaching. But the historic way to gather this data is slow, expensive, and not very accurate. Sarcix developed an AI algorithm to make this process fast, comprehensive, and objective.
Without mapEDU
With mapEDU
As the team worked to fine tune the product, they confronted two major challenges:
The product was difficult to sell because it required the client to gather all their data in advance, transfer to Sarcix, and then Sarcix would process the data and produce a comprehensive report. An excellent report – better than any alternative. But it was a snap shot in time, and if a client wanted to focus on continuous improvement, they would have to repeat this process each time. And – probably an even bigger hurdle – the client could not effectively test the product in any way. They had to rely solely on sample reports as proof of effectiveness prior to committing to a substantial, one time purchase.
As more and more teaching has moved online, they needed a way to capture and analyze video recordings. Working with Google, they solved that puzzle. Now the product can analyze any type of lecture content – print or video!
That’s all well and good, Joel – but how did you get stuck with a day job again?
Several months ago, we were introduced to the Sarcix team. They were in the process of moving product to the cloud – but needed more money to complete the process. And, quite frankly, they also need substantial help to commercialize the product as they had essentially no sales or marketing to speak of (and no experience in those realms, either).
As part of our mission to help promising and interesting startups, we developed a business plan for them. At the conclusion of that process, it was obvious that they could not actually implement it without help. The more we thought about it, it became clear that my network of former Lightspeed Systems colleagues – coupled with Kat and I – had all the non-technical skills they needed.
So, we reinvented the company as mapEDU – with a fully SAAS-based model. Customers can now purchase an annual subscription to the service, upload the data over time as their schedule allows, and test various scenarios at any time. Beta tests by prospects are quick and easy.
Not only have we solved the earlier barriers to success – our timing could not be better. As we all know, the pandemic has forced companies into remote work – and vastly accelerated remote learning.
mapEDU is a 100% remote company (many members of the team have never actually met in person, yet). We are building it to work well with this model from the get-go. And more importantly, the team’s early work to incorporate analysis of video lectures into the AI engine will pay massive dividends now – as more and more of the professional school content is delivered in that manner today – and will continue to be a substantial portion of the teaching model for the foreseeable future.
In sum, exciting times for the Thrive Haus team. We are still enjoying working with our local partners – and newly emerging companies at the CalPoly Hot House – but we have also jumped completely back into the startup/early stage scene at mapEDU.
It promises to be hard work, exciting, frustrating, and fun – all at once!
Still building teams,
Joel